The Unclassed eBook

He awaited with extreme impatience the evening on
which he would again see Ida. Distrustful always,
he could not entirely dismiss the fear that his first
impressions might prove mistaken in the second interview;
yet he tried his best to do so, and amused himself
with imagining for Ida a romantic past, for her and
himself together a yet more romantic future.
In spite of the strange nature of their relations,
he did not delude himself with the notion that the
girl had fallen in love with him at first sight, and
that she stood before him to take or reject as he
chose. He had a certain awe of her. He divined
in her a strength of character which made her his
equal; it might well be, his superior. Take, for
instance, the question of the life she was at present
leading. In the case of an ordinary pretty and
good-natured girl falling in his way as Ida Starr
had done, he would have exerted whatever influence
he might acquire over her to persuade her into better
paths. Any such direct guidance was, he felt,
out of the question here. The girl had independence
of judgment; she would resent anything said by him
on the assumption of her moral inferiority, and, for
aught he knew, with justice. The chances were
at least as great that he might prove unworthy of
her, as that she should prove unworthy of him.

When he presented himself at the house in the little
court by Temple Bar, it was the girl Sally who opened
the door to him. She beckoned him to follow,
and ran before him upstairs. The sitting-room
presented the same comfortable appearance, and Grim,
rising lazily from the hearthrug, came forward purring
a welcome, but Ida was not there.

“She was obliged to go out,” said Sally,
in answer to his look of inquiry. “She
won’t be long, and she said you was to make yourself
comfortable till she came back.”

On a little side-table stood cups and saucers, and
a box of cigars. The latter Sally brought forward.

“I was to ask you to smoke, and whether you’d
like a cup of coffee with it?” she asked, with
the curious naivete which marked her mode of
speech.

“The kettle’s boiling on the side,”
she added, seeing that Waymark hesitated. “I
can make it in a minute.”

“In that case, I will.”

“You don’t mind me having one as well?”

“Of course not.”

“Shall I talk, or shall I keep quiet? I’m
not a servant here, you know,” she added, with
an amusing desire to make her position clear.
“Ida and me’s friends, and she’d
do just as much for I.”

“Talk by all means,” said Waymark, smiling,
as he lit his cigar. The result was that, in
a quarter of an hour Sally had related her whole history.
As Ida had said, she came from Weymouth, where her
father was a fisherman, and owner of bum-boats.
Her mother kept a laundry, and the family had all
lived together in easy circumstances. She herself
had come to London—­well, just for a change.
And what was she doing? Oh, getting her living
as best she could. In the day-time she worked
in a city workroom.